archival gems

MALPRACTICE – A verdict of $2,250 damages has been rendered against Dr. William Robertson, of Hanover, Ohio, for mal-treatment of a dislocation of the knee joint, which resulted in amputation of the limb.

Lewis Bell came to Davidson College in 1865 and graduated in 1870. Though he was a student during the Reconstruction Era, it is likely that most of his college experiences were mundane. He was a member of the Eumenean Literary Society. Among his papers held in the college archive is a donation request from the society from the year after he graduated. Like many Davidson students, he also seems to have been concerned with his grades. His papers also contain a list of Davidson College students and their grade averages from 1865 to 1868. We know little more about Bell’s time at Davidson, except that he also seemed to have an interest in spirituous liquors. A final item in the John Lewis Bell collection is a well-used recipe for “Mother’s Bitters,” which was comprised of “tanzy, Wormwood and Barbary Root, a good handful of Star root, the same of Columbo and Chamomile.”

Why would Bell have kept a recipe for bitters amongst his Davidson paraphernalia? He might have been keen on bitters for recreational imbibing purposes. Americans were certainly interested in mixed drinks during the years that Bell attended Davidson, and cocktails had a long history. People in England in the eighteenth century were known to mix patent bitters with brandy, and by 1806 the word “cocktail” had developed to mean “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters.” However, in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Davidson College was very concerned with limiting students’ access to alcohol. It prohibited the sale of alcohol in college-owned properties, and brought suit against stores that sold spirits to undergraduates. Perhaps Bell was unable to buy bitters for cocktails in the town, and had to resort to making them himself.

Bell might equally have been using “Mother’s Bitters” as a patent medicine. In the late nineteenth century bitters were sold as a remedy for all manner of ills. In 1866, the American Agriculturalist noted that bitters could aid in “weak digestion or a debilitated state of the system, if properly taken under medical advice.” Similarly, Rowney in Boston (1892) spoke to the benefits of “mother’s bitters, made of dandelion root, and such wholesome things.” In her study of alcohol and botanicals, Amy Stewart writes that from the eighteenth-century forward, people “realized that adding wormwood to wine and other distilled spirits actually improved the flavor or at least help disguise the stench of crude, poorly made alcohol.” Chamomile, barberry root and tansy also have practical purposes – all work as anti-inflammatories, and chamomile additionally works as a sedative. The combination of herbs in “Mother’s Bitters” consequently seem to have been medically beneficial. Perhaps Bell was in need of an anti-inflammatory, or means of calming an upset stomach. There were several stores on Main Street in the 1870s that might have sold bitters, but the college’s prohibition against the sale of alcohol might just as well have prevented Bell from purchasing them in town.

The Scofield Store was one among a few stores that might have sold bitters on Davidson’s Main Street.

So, while he might have been collecting recipes in order engage in an illicit cocktail culture, Bell might also have been trying to make a well-known remedy for a “weak destitution” or “debilitated system.”

Although Bell’s use of the “Mother’s Bitters” recipe can never be known, we can still get at Bell’s experience. I recreated Bell’s recipe, using dried herbs and roots, and steeped the whole mixture in alcohol for two weeks. The resulting concoction was distinctly flavored. It didn’t taste like the bitters we use in cocktails today. Rather, it had an anise flavor, not dissimilar from pernod. This is due to the combination of wormwood (which, on its own has a menthol-like flavor), tansy (which tastes like peppermint), chamomile, barberry root, and star anise (which has a warm flavor, and was often included in absinthe along with wormwood). On a recent Monday night, a group of faculty and staff drank our “Mother’s bitters” in seltzer. We experienced it as a largely medicinal taste, and found that the smell of wormwood did indeed obscure other scents. While knowing what the bitters taste like doesn’t get us much closer to Bell’s everyday experiences of Davidson, it does help us bridge the divide between the 1870s and the present, and to imagine how a Reconstruction-era Davidson student might have imbibed.

BRITISH OFFICERS ROASTED ALIVE AND DEVOURED BY CANNIBALS – A letter has been received in London, from an officer of H.M. war steamer Driver, detailing the particulars of an engagement between the British and the New Zealanders, in which ten men of the Carton frigate were killed, and thirteen wounded, exclusive of several men of the 89th regiment. The savages roasted alive two European officers, whom they devoured. The writer adds the additional melancholy intelligence of Lieut. Philpotts, the son of the Bishop of Exeter, having been scalped, roasted and eaten by the Zealanders. Shortly after his melancholy fate, the eye glass of the gallant officer was found hear the spot where he was murdered and devoured.

On July 19th, 1845, New York City caught fire. It started in a whale oil warehouse in lower Manhattan and spread quickly, eventually engulfing warehouses full of explosives. The fire burned for over eight hours, and when it was finally put out, 30 people had died.

The fire was commemorated in popular prints in the 1880s, two of which currently held by the New York Public Library:

View of the terrific explosion at the Great Fire in New York. From Broad St. July 19th, 1845.

The Fire Of July 19, 1845 — The View At Bowling Green.

I came across the fire while trying to figure out the names of public health institutions in 1847 New York. The NYC guide I’m using – Doggett’s New York City Directory – for 1845-46 contains a list of the 217 buildings destroyed by the fire, and the names of the hundreds of people who were displaced by it.

I thought it might be fun to map the extent of this fire, described in Doggett’s as:

“The disastrous fire of the 19th of July, 1845 – long to be remembered by the citizens of New-York – having laid waste a considerable portion of the business section of the city; and causing, consequently, the removal of numerous business men and firms.”

Ever systematic, the guide went on:

“The total loss by the late fire has been variously estimated at from $5,000,000 to $8,000,000. The fire commenced about 3 o’clock, A.M. and was not subdued till 11 o’clock A.M., a period of eight hours. Supposing, therefore, the total loss to have been $6,000,000 – the average loss per hour, was $750,000; the loss, per quarter of an hour, was $187,500; the loss, per minute, was $3,125, and the average loss per second, was $52.08 1/2! Bank notes, of the denomination of one dollar, would not burn more rapidly in a common fireplace than was the property consumed by this conflagration.”

I have no sense of the relative value of the area destroyed today, but it encompasses much of the financial district of present-day New York City.

Perhaps it’s just that reading organizational records means more bureaucracy than I’m generally used to, but I’ve been intrigued by entries in the monthly meeting minutes of the Philadelphia Society of Friends that report on general levels of attendance at meetings throughout the week. I’ve just moved on to the yearly meeting, and found that those reports were aggregated, with the conclusion “The hour is generally well observed. All the meetings notice instances of sleeping, but in other respects little unbecoming behavior.”

I’ve finally tracked down the files containing army correspondence relative to Fort Gibson, in Indian Territory, around the time that the Cherokee Nation raised funds for famine relief. Many of the letters are about troop movements, but the one I’m reading now is crabby about whoever is responsible for the fort’s finances:

You are mistaken in supposing that the regulation of July 12th, 1845 went into operation at Fort Gibson only from the date of its recipt at the post (August 10th). The Regulation, like an act of any legislature, takes effect from its date.

And:

The explanation in reference to the large amount paid for garden seeds is not entirely satisfactory.

I took a trip down to Charleston today to look at the records of the Charleston Hibernian Society – the body that collected donations for famine relief in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. All told, these men took in approximately $15,000, and letters to the English consulate in New Orleans suggest that still more donations were made directly to British representatives in America. Sadly, the 1886 Charleston earthquake seems to have destroyed the minute books between February of 1847 and early 1857, so there was less than I’d hoped for. Nevertheless, I’ve come away with a list of members of the Charleston Hibernian Society to crosslist (and hopefully map) against the list of donors I’ve already assembled.

I also came across this delightful budget from February of 1847 –

The Treasurer Reports having paid the following bills:

Hayden & Gregg for Lamps $ 3.38

To Patriot for Advertising 17.50

G W Black for Building Drain 157.22

Stevens & Betts for Spittons & Spade 4.62

Stephen Jones for Repairing fence in yard 3.37

And for 1 Doz Porter 3.25

Aside from whatever was going on with that drain (G.W. Black was admitted to the Hibernian Society at the same meeting that bill was submitted, and seems to have been related to other members of the society, so I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was getting some kind of kick-back), I very much appreciate that a dozen porters could be bought for the same price as lamps or fence repairs, and that whoever bought those beers saw fit to charge them to the Society. The treasurer’s books also featured several remittances for whiskey.

Building on the patterns I’ve been trying to track in famine donors, I also noticed today that of the thirteen individual donors from New York City, nearly a quarter lived within a few blocks on Henry Street. I don’t know what it’s about, or if it’s just a random happenstance but I’ve got a whole other list of NYC donors and I look forward to finding out!

I’m a little late to the game with this, but I was really happy to find that in 2012, the US National Archives moved into the online gaming world and into the itunes store, with apps like DocsTeach (online here). DocsTeach is, on the face of it, a fantastic idea. It centers the idea that a considerable part of historical learning comes through the analysis of primary sources, and seems to try to build activities that would be accessible to students with different learning styles. Many of the activities are tactile, insofar as you’re asked to move documents around, though some are more well-developed than others. For the activity on suffrage, for example the task is to arrange documents in the order in which they were produced – a fine way to teach reading skills, but not so much specific to women’s suffrage in America.

Lewis and Clark screenshot. This is featured prominently on the itunesU site for the app, and seems to be one of the better-realized activities.

The Lewis & Clark expedition activity, on the other hand, requires a little more critical thinking, as well as some sounder pedagogy. Given a map of the United States and a bunch of documents, students are told:

“In 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. President Jackson sent co-captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore west of the Mississippi River in 1804. Their route west is shown in green. Although this territory was unknown to some, to others it was very familiar.

Examine the documents related to the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Determine where different groups were involved and use the hints to place the documents on the X’s on the map.”

The documents include Lewis’s speech to the Otto Indians (August, 1804), “List of Indian Presents Purchased by Meriwether Lewis in Preparation for the Expedition to the West” (1803), and the “Proclamation to the People of New Orleans” announcing the Louisiana Purchase. Having placed the documents on the map, students are asked to make a list of all of the powers at play in the region, and come to class prepared to share with classmates. Though some of the language in the app, especially in the instructions elides native agency (things happen to, or are given to Indians – there’s no sense that Indians were active players in this at all), and only hints at the extent to which the United States was a young, untried, and anxious nation, it’s not a bad game overall. I’m happy that the National Archives is thinking pedagogically, and that there’s an initiative to digitize documents that students might not otherwise ever be able to see.